Sketches of The
Character, Manners, and Present State of the Highlanders of Scotland

Appendix

S, Page 106. State of Education in the Highlands in
the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

It is a generally received opinion, that the
Highlanders are ignorant and uneducated. It is no doubt true, that
previous to the present reign, many could not read, or understand what
they read in Eng-iish, and there were few books in their own language ;
but they had their Bards and Senachies, who taught them in the manner
already mentioned. The middle and higher orders of society were as well
educated as the youth of any part of the United Kingdom. The gentlemen
farmers and tacksmen were certainly better classical scholars than men
holding the same occupation and rank in society, in the south. These
observations must be confined to the period which has elapsed since the
reign of Charles II. as the prior notices are not in a connected series.
But, to judge from insulated circumstances, the education of the gentry,
and the better order of farmers of an earlier period was not deficient. Of
this, the celebrated George Buchanan, the son of a small Highland farmer,
was a remarkable instance. On reference to old family charters and papers,
it will be found, that the signatures to the former, from and after the
year 1500, show a correctness of writing not to be seen in modern times,
and not to be acquired without much time and experience. Aware that it
might be said that these signatures were written by the notaries and
others who drew out these charters, I have compared the signatures of the
same persons to different instruments at considerable intervals, and
signed in different places, sometimes as principals, at others as
witnesses, and I have found them always similar, or in the same hand. Of
this I have seen many instances in my own family, as well as in several
others. A fair hand is certainly no proof of a classical education; but it
is a proof of care having been bestowed on a branch of education which was
not then so necessary as it is now, when epistolary communication is so
much more frequent. In those days, when there was no public conveyance,
and when distant events did not occupy so much of the attention of men,
there was not the same inducement to correspond. It may therefore be
concluded that they to whose instruction in writing so much attention
had been paid, would not be neglected in other branches of education. The
fragments of manuscripts and private correspondence which have been
preserved in families give evidence of classical attainments, and prove
also, that this was not confined to one sex. The following is an instance.
There is a manuscript volume preserved in the family of Stewart of Urrard,
of 260 pages, consisting of poems, songs, and short tracts, in the Scotch
language, written, as is stated on the first page, by Margaret Robertson,
(daughter of John Robertson of Lude) and wife of Alexander Stewart of
Bonskeid, dated 1643. It is written in a beautiful hand, and with such
correctness, that it might be sent to the press.

There were eminent grammar schools in Inverness,
Fortrose or Channonry, Dunkeld, &c. The grammar school of Perth was
celebrated for ages. From these different seminaries, young men were sent
to Aberdeen and St Andrews, and many to Leyden and Douay. The armies of
Sweden, Holland, and France, gave employment to the younger sons of the
gentry, who were educated abroad; many of these returned with a competent
knowledge of modern languages, added to their classical education, often
speaking Latin with more purity than Scotch, which these Highlanders
sometimes learned after leaving their native homes, where nothing but
Gaelic was spoken. The race of Bradwardine is not long extinct. In my own
time, several veterans might have sat for the picture, so admirably drawn
in Waverley, of that most honourable, brave, learned, and kind-hearted
personage, the Baron of Bradwardine. These gentlemen returned from the
Continent full of warlike Latin, French phrases, and inveterate broad
Scotch, (learned, as I have said, by the Highlanders abroad.) One, I
believe of the last of these, Colonel Alexander Robertson, of the Scotch
Brigade, uncle of the present Strowan, I well remember.

[Another of the Bradwardine character is still
remembered by the Highlanders, with a degree of admiration bordering on
enthusiasm. This was John Stewart of the family of Kincardine, in
Strathspey, known in the country by the name of John Roy Stewart, an
accomplished gentlemen, an elegant scholar, a good poet, a brave soldier,
and an able officer. He composed with equal facility in English, Latin,
and Gaelic; but it was by his songs, epigrams, and descriptive pieces in
the latter language, that he attracted the admiration of his countrymen.
He was an active leader in the Rebellion of 1745, and during "his hiding"
of many months, he had more leisure to indulge his taste for poetry and
song. The country traditions are full of his descriptive pieces, eulogies,
and laments on friends, or in allusion to the events of that unfortunate
period. He had been long in the service of France and Portugal. He was in
Scotland in 1745, and commanded a regiment composed of the tenants of his
family, and a considerable number of the followers of Sir George Stewart
of Grandtully, who had been placed under him. With these, amounting in all
to 400 men, he joined the rebel army, and proved one of its ablest
partisans. Had the rebel commanders benefited by his judgment and military
talents, that deplorable contest would probably have been lengthened, and
much additional misery inflicted on the country. Colonel Stewart
recommended opposing the passage of the Duke of Cumberland's army across
the Spey. Had this advice been acted upon, allowing for the expeditious
movements of the rebels, many men must have been lost in forcing the
passage of that rapid river. He also opposed fighting on Culloden Moor,
which with a level and hard surface, was well calculated for the cavalry
and artillery of the royal army. When this advice was rejected, he
proposed to attack before the army was formed in order of battle; this
also was disregarded, and the attack delayed till the royal army was
formed in two lines. It is said that the Irish officers attached to the
rebel army, dreading a lengthened campaign in the mountains, opposed
retiring farther north, seeing that, in such a field as Culloden,
one-third of the Highlanders being absent, and those present, two days
without food, and after a long and harrassing night-march to Nairn and
back, with an intention of surprising the Duke's army, (as at Preston),
the contest would soon be decided, and their lives safe from the laws,
whatever was the result. The point was fortunately brought to an issue,
and much calamity, the consequenceof a lengthened civil war, saved
to the country.]

I also knew several tacksmen of good learning, who
could quote and scan the classics with much ease and rapidity ; while the
sons of these men are now little better than clowns, knowing nothing
beyond English reading and the common rules of arithmetic. When the
Hessian troops were quartered in Athole in 1745, the commanding officers,
who were accomplished gentlemen, found Latin a ready means of
communication at every inn. At Dunkeld, Inver, Blair Athole, Taybridge,
&c. every landlord spoke that language, and I have been informed, by
eye-witnesses, of the pleasure expressed by a colonel of the Hessian
cavalry, when he halted at the inn in Dunkeld, the landlord of which
addressed and welcomed him in Latin, the only language they mutually
understood. I knew four of these respectable innkeepers, who, like many
other valuable classes in the Highlands, have disappeared. Perhaps the
landlords of Dunkeld, Blair Athole, or indeed any other Highland inn, will
not, even in this educated age, agreeably surprise, or make themselves
more acceptable to their customers, by addressing them in Latin.

But it was in the remotest district of the kingdom, the
Isle of Skye, and other islands, that classical education was most
general. There, the learning of the gentry was quite singular. Few of them
went abroad, and except the three lairds, Macdonald, Macleod, and Mackinnon, few of them were proprietors. I believe it is rather unique for
the gentry of a remote corner to learn Latin merely to talk to each
other-yet so it was in Skye. It was remarked that, for a considerable
period, the clergymen of the sixteen parishes of Skye, Harris, Lewis, &c.
were men of good families, great learning, and consequent influence their
example, therefore, might diffuse and preserve this classical taste. Owing
to the same cause, the Isle of Skye songs are sometimes filled with
allusions to the heathen deities. While the younger sons of Highland
gentlemen were educated for the church, law, or physic, the elder could
not be neglected. The elder brothers of Sir George Mackenzie, Lord
Advocate to Charles II. and of Duncan Forbes of Culloden, Advocate to
George II. could not have been uneducated.

But various causes have contributed to a change of
manners, and to remove numbers of the ancient race, and have put an end to
all university education, except in a few cases, where young men are
intended for the learned professions: consequently the last generation did
not give their children the same education which they themselves had
received.

[The average annual salary of the parish schoolmaster
was L.7, 10s. that is, L.5 the lowest and L. 10 the highest, with school
fees, which were equally low, Latin being taught for half a crown the
quarter, English and writing for one shilling. When the Lord President
Hope was Lord Advocate, he brought a bill into Parliament to increase the
salaries of this useful body of men. The bill was passed, and no
schoolmaster can now have less than L. 10 salary, the maximum being L. 25.
The opposition Mr Hope met with showed, that however much people may talk
about the value of education, the estimate of its advantages does not
appear to stand high in the opinion of those who pay the schoolmasters, or
perhaps the value is better understood and more appreciated when cheaply
obtained; otherwise why meet so important a measure by an opposition which
has reduced the scale so low that even with the increased emoluments, no
man of talents will remain a pans schoolmaster except from necessity.]

Thus we see young men sent into the army and other
professions with an education not extending beyond reading and arithmetic,
and with manners unformed and as unlike the former race of gentlemen
farmers in their general appearance and character, as in their education.
Hence, many have been led to observe, that the youth of the second order
of Highland gentry have more degenerated, and are more changed in every
respect than the Highland peasantry. Many causes have tended to accelerate
this change; one of which is, that three-fourths of the old respectable
race of gentlemen tacksmen have disappeared, and been supplanted by men
totally different in manners, birth, and education. Persons travelling
through the Highlands will observe what description of persons the present
tacksmen are. The character upheld by the officers of the Highland
regiments in the Seven Years' War, and in that with America, show what
sort of men the ancient race were. One half of the officers of those corps
were the sons of tacksmen. Of these respectable officers I could give many
names, but shall mention only a few:óGenerals Simon Fraser, killed
at Saratoga in 1777, and Thomas M. Fraser, killed at Dieg in 1804;
Lieutenant-General Simon Fraser, commanding the British troops in Lisbon;
Sir Archibald Campbell, Governor-General of India; Sir Hector Munro; Sir
Alexander Munro; Major-Generals John Small, Thomas Fraser, Francis Maclean, J. Stewart, P. Mackenzie, and a numerous list of brave soldiers
and officers of talent and acquirements; as well as many accomplished
civilians, Sir John Macpherson, Governor-General of India, the translator
of Ossian, and many others.

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